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** spoiler alert **

As a holder of a degree in English, I am constantly asked something along the lines of “you read this, right?�� Usually the "this" in the question is either some really obscure porn book or Russian literature. Then I have to explain that English literature and Russian literature are two different groups, and I am sorely lacking in Russian literature reading.

Don’t judge me. I’ve read the whole Faerie Queen more than twice. I’ve read Milton’s Paradise Lost, Regained, and Samson and his prose more than once (and god, was it hard). I’m allowed to be lacking somewhere.

So Lolita is one of those books that I’ve always meant to be read, but never got around to until I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up this edition.

Like I said, don’t judge me. I spend more at independent bookstores.

It’s strange coming to Lolita after seeing Nabokov's butterfly collection. It’s a lovely and impressive butterfly collection. It’s hard trying to reconcile the two, for some reason.

Well, not so hard when you look at the writing in terms of simple literary value. Nabokov writes like the butterflies I see in my front garden (they really love the flowers that carrots sprout). Butterflies are light and airy, but if you look at the markings on the wings, there is far more depth and detailed beauty than a first glance reveals. I don’t collect butterflies, but I can understand the attraction, the intricate detail, the startling beauty when you look close. The same is true for birds. Look closely at sparrow, and in the smallest details of the bird there is so much beauty. Nabokov writing is like that. There is the action, the first up front detail. Then there is the rhythm and beauty of the language. It is a novel that begs to be read aloud, for the prose follows tripling over the tongue. There is such beauty in the writing, such exquisite beauty.

But, and we all know what the but is.

Lolita is a novel toward from the viewpoint of a pedophile. There is no way around it. At times reading the book, I wanted to take a shower to get clean. It is a story told from the viewpoint of a stalker, who doesn’t have a redeeming feature.

You want him to get hit by a car instead of his wife.

Nabokov doesn’t support Humbert; at least I don’t think he does. Humbert is the narrator but the term hero or anti-hero doesn’t apply. He’s the protagonist of the story, but hero isn’t the correct word.

In many ways, the novel feels like an indictment of society that persecutes Humbert for what seems to be almost a lesser crime though it feels strange to write that. It is, however, very telling. Or perhaps that is the point, perhaps the crime he gets punished for, isn’t the only murder that he commits. The only physical murder, but not the only murder.

Of course, the question becomes who is the abettor in such a situation?

And the answer to that question is as uncomfortable as the narrator himself.